Amazon is now calling for government regulation of facial recognition technology, even as it defends sales of its own such technology to law enforcement authorities. In a new post on the Amazon Web Services Machine Learning blog, the company’s VP of Global Public Policy, Michael Punke, writes, “We support the calls for an appropriate national…
The inaugural MIT AI Policy Congress recently convened in Massachusetts, bringing together leading researchers, industry insiders, and policy experts for a series of discussions about the future of artificial intelligence. Hosted by MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the conversation stressed the importance of collaboration and…
“By targeting three of the world’s biggest tech companies, the letters could help to focus attention on the issue.” A coalition of 85 advocacy and activist groups have signed open letters urging Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to pledge not to sell facial recognition technology to government authorities. Signatories include the American Civil Liberties Union, the…
The results are in for the latest FindBiometrics Year in Review Survey, with at least some of them confirming the biggest trends observed over the course of 2018. And this can be seen clearly in the responses to Question Three of the survey in particular, which asked, “From your perspective, which biometric modality has been…
A newly published patent application from Amazon outlines a smart doorbell designed to use facial recognition for a kind of technologically-enhanced neighborhood watch. The essential idea is to let users add suspicious individuals to a watch list, which is shared by a given community network based on connected houses using the biometric doorbell system. When…
Facial recognition technology has had a big year, in good ways and bad. On the positive side, Apple signaled a more or less definitive switch to 3D facial recognition as the primary mechanism for user authentication on its flagship smartphones: Having made a big splash last year with its introduction of Face ID on the…
“A key component of the GMCNgine is Rekognition, Amazon’s controversial computer vision platform.” Facial recognition technology’s growing role in the fight against child exploitation could see a substantial expansion after the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s launch of a new AI-driven system this week. Called the GMCNgine, the system leverages machine learning and artificial…
Amazon is seeking to get its Alexa virtual assistant into more third party devices with the announcement that it has now opened up the SDK for its Alexa Mobile Accessory Kit. The development platform was first announced near the start of the year, when it was available for select headphone devices from Bose, Jabra, and…
At a time of heightened controversy around government use of facial recognition technology, Trueface is laying out its own ethical guidelines for ‘responsibly deployed facial recognition’. Writing in a Medium post, Trueface CEO Shaun Moore groups his firm’s ethos under three main headings. The first, and perhaps most important, is “Humanity First”, a reference to…
It has been another remarkable year for the biometrics industry, with a lot of activity across a wide range of sectors. Apple, which spearheaded the mobile biometrics revolution with its launch of Touch ID five years ago, went ahead and confirmed its shift to 3D facial recognition with the launch of three new iPhones featuring…
“After an ACLU report revealed that Amazon had been selling facial recognition technology to police earlier this year, an assortment of privacy rights activists, shareholders, and even Amazon employees publicly decried the practice and called on the company to stop. “ Amazon is showing no sign of backing off from its marketing and sales of…
Two Canadian credit unions are now testing a system that lets customers do their banking through Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based virtual assistant. The technology comes by way of Vancouver-based FinTech specialist Central 1, which developed it in collaboration with San Francisco design agency Point One Digital. Essentially, the idea is to make Alexa a customer service…
“Amazon offers the example of Rekognition technology being used to crack a sex trafficking case by identifying 20 victims and helping to send the perpetrator to prison…” Amazon is trying to put its own spin on its sale of facial recognition technology to police with a new case study put together by Marinus Analytics. It…
“…in responding the ACLU’s latest volley, a spokesperson emphasized that Rekognition is used to aid human review, and not to definitively link one facial image to another” The ACLU has turned Amazon’s facial recognition technology against the company itself in a damning new demonstration highlighting the technology’s flaws. The civil rights organization says that it…
“In its memo, the OPD said that the next trial would operate similarly to the first, in which seven police officers volunteered to have their faces scanned by the system.” The Orlando Police Department will continue to test facial recognition technology from Amazon despite the recent outcry from privacy and civil rights advocates over the…
“IBM is going to release a dataset of 36,000 facial images that will be equally distributed across a range of ethnicities, genders, and ages.” As the competition to develop sophisticated facial recognition systems continues to escalate, IBM is preparing to make a decidedly counterintuitive move, with plans to release a huge dataset for training facial…
Biometric surveillance technology for the home continues to spread, with the Ooma Butterflye having landed in Canada. It’s a compact video surveillance camera that can be placed anywhere in a given home, and operates over wifi. While there are other smart home cameras on the market, the Butterflye distinguishes itself with its use of facial…
Amazon’s own employees have now joined the chorus of voices calling for the company to halt its sale of biometric surveillance technology to law enforcement and other government agencies. Their demand has surfaced in an open letter to Jeff Bezos with an undisclosed number of signatories. The letter has arrived immediately after another open letter,…
Just a month after the ACLU made Amazon’s sale of facial recognition technology to government authorities a matter of public debate, a group of prominent Amazon shareholders are calling on the company to halt such business activities, at least until the proper oversight is put in place. The controversy concerns Rekognition, Amazon’s machine vision solution,…